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This week has seen the introduction of new rules allowing Google Adwords customers to bid on other peoples trademarks but is anybody doing it?
Initially on Tuesday (the day the policy change was enforced) we saw a large number of adverts for brand name terms but these ads are no longer showing.
We suspect that ads were being triggered by broad match terms and the advertisers didn't intentially target the trademarked terms.
Looking at the search results for brands such as Amazon, BBC, Tesco, Lastminute.com and Asda leaves me puzzled why there are not more competing retailers and affiliates bidding on the terms.
Of course an affiliate of Tesco would not be allowed to bid on "tesco" but they could bid on "asda".
The same applies for "amazon" - why are there no ads for competing book retailers?
Certain payday loan websites seem to be advertising on all the brand name terms but there is a distinct lack of real retailers taking advantage of the new rules.
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However, lets look at product trademarks. That's a different situation. At the start of the week only Apple was able to bid on [ipod]. Look at the PPC action on that keyword today; you'll find retailers and affiliates aplenty there.